Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ... exempted from examination, I think that I have established my point. I do not at all pretend to say that we have reached an ideal. I do not mean to imply that our system of education is a perfect one, or that it is being perfectly worked. But I do say that these thirty years have not been wasted; that we have learnt a great deal, and done a great deal, in them; and that we can show a record of what I will call the education of our educational life of which we need not be ashamed. "There are those who are entirely dissatisfied with everything that is being done: who make haste Pi get rich, forgetting that it is easier to pull down than to build up, and that the firmer and stronger the house is to be, the slower and more gradual must be the process of building it. "But there are others who see weak places which they would gladly strengthen, for they know them to be very weak. There are several questions affecting the welfare of our schools which will have to be faced; the questions of staff, of teaching power, of improved equipment, of the dearth of capable assistants, of the best and most effective curriculum and methods of teaching it, of the status of our rural schools, of the working of the School Board system in small parishes, and others of great importance. But the question which is of paramount importance to my mind is the question of attendance. I place it in the forefront of all. Given schools of the best pattern and quality conceivable, of what use are they if their benches are empty, or filled as irregularly as they are now? "In 1872 I wrote my first general report, after my tour of inspection through Gloucestershire. In it I said, 'In each village, education has only three supporters--the squire, the parson, and the...show more